Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars

[kerravonsen]

Okay, now I've caught up with "Waters of Mars" (yes, yes, I am so very far behind) and I'm going to post about it now before I go on to The End of Time.

In short: it was awesome.

A kaleidoscope of things I liked:

Beautiful Mars.
Ancient North Martian.
The mention of the Ice Warriors and the suggestion that they had fought this thing and contained it in the glacier.
"Water gets everywhere"
The woman who died looking at a message from her daughter.
The creepy, creepy water-monsters; it was a classic claustrophobic horror movie.
The lack of bicycles.
Adelaide Brook.
That there was a real Aussie on the team. (The accent was authentic, anyway; I'm not sure if I was supposed to recognise the actor)
Adelaide Brook.
The way so many of them were heroically self-sacrificial (not just Adelaide Brook).
The anguished walking away of the Doctor as he could hear them all dying.
The flashes to the news-web articles about what was going to happen, and then later how they changed when history did.
Adelaide Brook.

Oh, Doctor, Doctor, such hubris! When he was walking away, I was saying to myself "Keep walking! Don't do it, Doctor, don't do it!" But of course he did. And Adelaide Brook was so awesome:
"Nobody should have such power."
"Tough."
"Is there anything you can't do?"
Yep. He couldn't stop her from committing suicide (and putting history more or less back on track). At least, that's what I assume happened.

And, of course, we get foreshadowing for "the Doctor is going to die" stuff. I wonder if there will be Oood involved, or whether that was just a Vision of Doom when the Doctor saw that Oood at the end. But we know he's flying off into doom, of course.

I think I shall miss Ten, but not as much as I miss Nine.

Comments

[drednort.livejournal.com]

Oood. I just love the word Oood. :)

[drednort.livejournal.com]

Oh - and the Aussie is Peter O'Brien. He's fairly prolific, more in the UK, than Australia, nowadays, but not necessarily in shows you'd have seen. The only 'sci fi' I can recall him doing before is the second series Spellbinder, but he's been around a while.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

The amusing thing about the casting is that Peter O'Brien played a character in Russell T. Davies's Queer as Folk who got dumped because he wasn't into Doctor Who. So I kept wondering "Gosh, would Vince have stuck with him if he'd known he was going end up in Doctor Who?"

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The lack of bicycles didn't make a lot of sense considering the huge number of tunnels they must have brought with them. But what annoyed me most of all (besides the bleak fact that the Doctor wasn't there to save anyone) was the production of unlimited amounts of water by each alien. If they could create it from air or whatever, why would they need to invade the earth? Admittedly this is sometime after watching it, but my reaction was: aha! That's where all the water that disappeared off SGU's Destiny went! The have wormholes inside them! Two plot holes plugged! ;-)

I miss Nine a lot, but I don't think I'll miss Ten at all. I look forward so much to a new Doctor and chief writer.

[kerravonsen]

was the production of unlimited amounts of water by each alien
Indeed. It wasn't science, it was magic. But it sort of made magical sense; they were water-elementals, they could control water and they had more power where there was more water, hence their desire to go to Earth.

I miss Nine a lot, but I don't think I'll miss Ten at all. I look forward so much to a new Doctor and chief writer.
New chief writer, yes. I'm still fond of Ten, if only because of Martha and Donna.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Martha and Donna are awesome, yes. I like Tennant as an actor; I just don't like the hyper, emo, self-pitying Doctor he portrays.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Adelaide Brooke is beyond awesome. And something the last three episodes have demonstrated is that Doctor-plus-older-companion works really well.

PS Do read this meditation (http://kaffyr.livejournal.com/124407.html) on The Waters of Mars.